We could actually improve our democracy by making voting mandatory.

In Australia, we've tried that. I have to say, that I personally, am not a fan.

The consequences of forcing politically ignorant or complacent people to vote is that they end up deciding the result of the election, and you just get skilled used car salesmen as your politicians. They know all the buzzwords and three word slogans to keep the politically apathetic tuned in.

I know you mrrrkns absolutely hate it when furriners' talk about your politics, but it saddens me to see a fellow democracy in such a state. Both these guys are demented old f&@ks! These are the best candidates your democratic system can give you? Really? I know we Aussies have plenty to cringe about, but jeez!

This wouldn't surprise me at all, if it almost entirely be rental scooters.

Here in Adelaide, they have these rental scooters lining the sidewalks on the nightlife strips - on the weekend!

This seems to me to be almost criminally negligent. What do they think young people are going to do with these things, while drunk? They are going to ride them, while drunk, and they are going to have accidents, of course. Because they're drunk.

I like the rental scooters, as they're a great way of getting round the city when you're in a hurry, but they should shut them down on the weekend evenings, FFS.

I wonder whether there'll be this much outage when Jillian Assange is sentenced to decades in prison in the US.

Looks like we have a movement then. Only small, so far, but ......

I'm just wondering if we could substitute our current monarchy for the Danish one. Maybe if a Danish naval officer lands at Sydney Cove and plants a flag there? This has a precedent I believe.

I honestly don't know what happened there.

Cancel culture exemplified.

There’s literally a standing US order to invade the Hague if a US military member is tried

Can I have source?

EDIT: Don't worry, found it

https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law

Actually, that was a postal survey, before a parliamentary vote. Not a binding referendum.

FWIW I'll be voting Yes, but I doubt it will do much good.

Referendums never succeed in this country, unless they have bipartisan support. So what was the point of this exercise? What's Albanese's angle in all of this?

I had no idea that this was going on. I expect that, like me, most people are horrified.

On the top of my head, I'd say a trust-level system would be great, both for instances and users. New instances and users start out on a low trust level. Posts and commemts federated by them could be set to require approval or get deranked compared to other posts and comments.

Good thinking, but devil's advocate here: might make it difficult for new users to post anything. I can imagine a lot of communities would utilise that feature, maybe even the majority.

Surprised to know they even had an account there in the first place.

Problem is that these Americans talk. A lot.

The grim reaper in Monty Python wasn't just whining. The struggle is real.

I generally only use the Android client. But if there's any similarity, there's no way to stop them spamming you with their shorts.

YouTube be like

Yeah it's interesting to think what our world would be like if there were more than one surviving species of genus homo.

Some of us consider homosapiens with different colour skin to be intrinsically different for some reason. What if there were individuals around who were different again?

It's interesting, I'll give it that. But considering that police have investigated and found nothing illegal, how is this anyone else's business?